The death mask

While death masks are Eve Duncan's stock-in-trade, the renowned forensic sculptor is looking forward to some family time with her husband, detective Joe Quinn, and their son Michael as soon as the teen finishes his term at a boarding school in Scotland. But Zakira, an African warlord, not only wants Eve to create a death mask for an ancient Egyptian queen whose riches have been unearthed in a village cave, he wants her to craft another queen's likeness as well. Boston medical student Celine Kelly is a dead ringer for Queen Nefertiti, with the operative word being dead. Zakira kidnaps both Michael and Celine as the ultimate leverage to make Eve do his bidding. As Quinn and mercenary Alex Dominic race to save Eve, Michael, and Celine, Zakira's henchmen ratchet up the violence against the trio. In this, the thirty-first in her popular Eve Duncan series, Johansen's race-against-time plot is driven by strong-willed adversaries, whose battle of wits with both enemies and colleagues makes for a dialogue-driven page-turner.